Institutionalized in a Children’S Home: Skellow Hall 1950-1963 a True Story of a Child and Children in a Home

By Allan Cooke

A Lost Childhood
This is the story of injustice and cruelty experienced by one boy during his years spent in the care of a West Riding County Councils Childrens Home, from being an infant of two until the age of seventeen. Memories which have stayed with him to this day are recorded in this book. They stole my childhood, something I will never forgive them for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Oct 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477238271

Book preview

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. The Cooke Family

Chapter 3. Wyndthorpe Hall

Chapter 4. Skellow Hall

Chapter 5. The Early Good Times

Chapter 6. The next ten years

Chapter 7. Holidays and after School

Chapter 8. Schools

Chapter 9. Skellow Infant School

Chapter 10. Carcroft Junior School

Chapter 11. Owston Park Secondary Modern School

Chapter 12. Conclusions

Chapter 13. Appendix 1

Acknowledgements

img160.jpg

Author Allan Cooke

Preface

INSTITUTIONALIZED. The meaning according to the O.E.D. is: to become apathetic and dependent, after a long period in a residential institution.

How true this is, but in my case it meant the influence of one person who could impose a set of rules on each of his young charges with physical punishment. Regular beatings with a large wooden backed hair brush were common. This was his way of instilling discipline and he clearly felt it would achieve the right result by reinforcing his law.

The archives held in Wakefield contain the minutes of the Children’s Committee of the West Riding County Council and they show a developing awareness that the regime at Skellow Hall was loud and harsh but they seemed unable to do anything about it.

Skellow Hall

034.jpg

This is the Children’s Home during the time I was there in the 1950s and 1960s

Chapter One

Introduction

Some time ago, whilst I was thinking about writing this book, I was told by a writer that there has to be a clearly stated reason for writing it. This gentleman I met on a journey to New Zealand. He said that it was the stated reason that gave him the inspiration and the focus to write. For most writers, an important reason for writing is to understand themselves and the world they live in. They need to clarify their thinking and establish what makes them what they are.

Most of my questioning has been about my early life into adolescence, because I was born and brought up in the time, after the Second World War, when a new social contract was being built. A great deal of the change was put into place by the central government in Westminster, but Local Authorities had the task of making the changes work properly. In my case, the Local Authority was the West Riding County Council, which governed a large part of Yorkshire. It was a forward and vigorous Authority in an area with considerable traditional economic strength. The staple industries were coal, iron and steel and woollen manufacture. There was also a great deal of engineering, including chemical engineering, and a strong agricultural tradition. I was born and spent my early days in the pit village of Thurnscoe.

Part of the task devolved by central government was the provision for the needy and, following the Children’s Act of 1948 this was actively pursued. In my case, this meant that I was taken from my parents and brought up in Homes in the West Riding County Council because it was judged that I and my brothers and sisters were in need of care and protection. Institutional upbringing has shaped my life and it is interesting to me to think about the differences between Homes and supervisors of Homes. It is also interesting to try to understand how the decisions by the West Riding County Council produced some of the differences and changes in the Homes. The County Council worked using several Committees and the responsibility for the 1948 Children’s Act was given to the Health Committee which set up a twenty-seven-man Children’s Committee. It also appointed Children’s Officers who were new professional workers. In fact, it was a Children’s Officer that made the recommendation that our family should be taken into care. The County Council had to have large premises in which to place children taken into care and Skellow Hall and Wyndthorpe Hall were both bought at this time. Fortunately, the price of large houses was quite low and the Council could afford to buy suitable places. Wyndthorpe Hall, for instance, was offered to the West Riding County Council for £4,500 for use for a public purpose by the Doncaster Co-operative Society. It consisted of the Hall, outbuildings, garages, stables, two cottages, ornamental grounds and gardens consisting of 13 acres of thereabouts. They needed staff to run these places, especially Matrons and Superintendents but others, such as cooks and domestic staff, as well.

County Councillors who had a position on important Committees were also made more important. From its inception in 1948, County Councillor Tom Baynham of Skellow featured consistently on the Children’s Committee and for most of the time, he was its chairman. The meeting of December 2nd. 1948 was run by a temporary chairman who was a senior figure on the County Council, but at the meeting on January 6th, it was agreed that Tom Baynham should be chairman for the ensuing year. His position was consolidated quickly and, on February 3rd 1949, it was agreed that he should be appointed as an ex-officio member of all the Visiting Committees throughout the County

The process of writing, or reasons for writing, was kick started when I read a thesis written by the son of the second Superintendent of Skellow Hall for his degree at Durham University. I found the thesis disturbing because it did not seem to me to describe the experience that we had at the Hall very accurately and decided to try to write from another perspective. I received very active encouragement from my brothers who also felt the need to question the conclusions, which seemed to us to be over optimistic and not to mirror the experience we had to undergo.

After years of thinking about my childhood, I had become angrier over the years, and needed to understand how and why children were treated in establishments that were supposed to improve the lives of unfortunate children but, often, produced the opposite effect. My own perceptions were so different from those that appeared in the thesis that I was made even angrier and needed to try to set the record straight.

As part of its response to the 1948 Children’s Act, the West Riding County Council set up a system to try to give unfortunate children a fair crack of the whip. My experience is that sometimes the system worked well and, at other times, it worked to further disadvantage youngsters. Whilst I was under the supervision of Miss Foston, who was the matron whilst I was at Wyndthorpe Hall, the system worked well. This was a nursery that gave me a very good start to the younger days of my life. This was also true of Skellow Hall when I first was transferred there and Mr Rhodes was the Superintendent. At that time, Skellow Hall was described as a Children’s Home. Mr E.L. Rhodes and Mrs. E.W. Rhodes had been appointed by the County Staffing Committee as Superintendent and Matron respectively in October 1949.

The error (what my brothers and I call the dirty trick), was the decisions taken after that time, middle of the 1950s, that turned Skellow Hall into an institution catering for children that were either under remand or were taken away from their parents because of their own misdemeanours. The children that were at the Hall up to 1954 were not there through any fault of their own and should, in my view, have been kept in a children’s home. We know that there were Homes that catered for children in need of care and protection because we met children from them when we were on holiday in Skegness.

The change in the intake at Skellow Hall coincided with the appointment of a new Superintendent who started in 1954. He quickly changed the regime emphasising punishment and minimising understanding. He was, in many ways unwise. For instance, he took one of the children and put him on a level much higher than the rest of the parentless children, by giving him sweets, gifts and his own space, without thinking how this would affect both him and the rest of us. The lad was often isolated and disliked and the rest of us were full of envy and felt the injustice very strongly. Even now, I would go as far as to say that the only people that never got a fair deal were children such as my family.

Discipline in the new regime was strict and physical. The favourite piece of ammunition (as I still call it) was the hair brush with which the Superintendent hit young lads bent over his knee. This was not called for. The process of monitoring by the West Riding County Council was not good enough either. Why did no one on the Council know what the Home had turned into? I cannot believe that there was no written record and communication with the police when young lads ran away and showed rebellion. I had the hairbrush punishment and, at times, could not lie down, never mind sit down. I am sure that many times I deserved strong correction and punishment but when he used it, he seemed to me to take pleasure from it. We did not believe that a normal human being would do such a thing to a normal child. This was something we all felt. The only reason that I never ran away was, not because I did not wish to get away from the place, but because I had no idea where to go. I had lost my sense of feeling for my parents, and as time went on, my family. In fact, to this day, there is one sister who lives in Spain that I have never seen.

After leaving the Hall and starting working life, I did not know where there was a bed for me while I was on leave from the armed forces, so could only return to the Hall. I suppose I really began to find independence when the day came that I had my last argument with the Superintendent because that was the day I took on the world and had to find a way to live, and eventually bring up a child, of whom I am very proud, in a right and proper way. Being in the Hall made me determined that no child of mine would have to undergo an experience like the one I had.

One other thing must be said. In the early days and until about 1955 a big difference was made by the regular visits by an outside agency in the form of the local Round Table. Mr P Wilde, who was a dentist by profession, was a regular visitor at the Hall. He seemed to find the Hall much to his liking and treated all the lads with respect, as did all the member of the Round Table. The visits were much appreciated by the lads and in the holidays there were occasions when the Round Table took the lads out on outings. We were never told why, or understood how, the influence of the Round Table was lost, but after Mr. Eaves took over as Superintendent, they ceased to visit. Maybe he thought that visitors from the community represented a challenge to his power over us. Maybe he did not want the community to know too much about what was going on at the Hall. Maybe he anticipated that, with the changing nature of the lads arriving at the Hall, there would need to be a very tight regime without influences from outside. To those of us who had been in the Hall whilst it was a Children’s Home, the loss of the Round Table visitors was significant. It was the end of a pleasing contact with the world outside the Hall and we were left with the influences within the Hall and at the schools as the main influences forming our perceptions about life and people. In a way, the schools were more important to us than to many of the other pupils, because they gave us a glimpse of life outside the institution that the Hall had become.

Chapter Two

The Cooke Family

001.jpg

John Henry Cooke. Evelyn May Cooke.

There is at least one big weakness in my writings about the family. I seem to have a lot to say about my brothers, but little about my sisters. There may be all sorts of reasons for this, but one of the main influences is my time at Skellow Hall. It was an institution dedicated to the care of boys and our experience of girls was very limited from a very early age. I knew that I had sisters, but did not actually know much about them until I was relatively older. They did not figure largely in any of my personal and social relationships. Stories about our early lives have come mainly from my brothers, which is another reason why my brothers are so important in the narrative.

I have tried to get hold of personal records from schools, the Hall and Local Authorities, but have failed miserably. There seems to be no available record of any of us, even though we were under the care of local government for virtually all our childhoods. The state decided to take us away from our parents and into its care but could not be sufficiently organised to maintain accurate and detailed records of how we were treated nor what we achieved. In many instances, I have been fobbed off and made to feel unimportant and marginalised. I have even felt to be a nuisance.

My father, John Henry Cooke was a short but well-built man. He had his own way and code in life that he stuck to. There is something of that in all his sons, though it is, perhaps, most obvious in my brother, John. There is a difference between the two. My father had a code of conduct and he did what he felt he had to do in, what he considered a right and proper manner. He was consistent. John was more erratic and had little thought of any consequences that might arise from his actions.

My father was married before he met my mother. He married Mary Ellen Rodwell on the 26th. December 1931 at St. Margaret’s Church, Swinton, between Rotherham and Barnsley. The marriage did not last long and there was just child, Mary, and I am led to believe that her mother died in childbirth. The oldest child in the family is, therefore, our step-sister.

My father was as straight as one could ask anyone to be and, if he could help anyone, he would do. He did not have a lot of possessions and not a lot of money, but he would not try to gain advantage by taking advantage of other people. If he found something, he would look to return to whoever had lost it. He was, in fact, strictly honest and he wanted his children to be like him. I am pleased to be able to say that we all have the same ideas as our father. I was a little scallywag as a child, but I have turned out to be straight and honest. I have had to fight on my own for what I am, but I am content. He also wanted to make sure that the house was run in a right and proper way, though he did like his pint of beer at the Cross Butcher’s Arms, which was his local.

My sister, one day, was tracing some picture on the front doorstep as my father came home from work. What are you doing? he asked. I’m tracing a picture was her answer. Where did you get the tracing paper from? asked my father. I found it outside the butcher’s shop this morning. He told her to take it back to the butcher’s shop where she found it and tell him that she had found it outside his door. When she came back, she had been told by the butcher that the tracing paper was a five pound note, the older type, white and large, really big in comparison to today’s bank notes. My father, who probably did not earn that much a week, would not live on somebody’s error or misfortune and insisted that the butcher kept the note.

He worked down the coal mines, which, to me, was his downfall. The dust that came from the mined coal must have got on his lungs to give him plenty of medical problems as he got older. He also liked his cigarettes, which also didn’t do him much good. ‘Woodbines’ was the brand he smoked and they did no good for his health. In those days, people did not seem to be aware of the effect of cigarettes as the majority of adults smoked. I can still see, in my mind’s eye, my father in his local as he sat in the same place all the time. If anyone was in his place when he came in, the landlord would ask him to move, which, of course, the person did. There was no trouble as respect was a common thing in those days.

My father was a big whippet fan. I suppose that many people would think of him as a typical Yorkshire man wearing a flat cap and being a coal miner and having a whippet. Whippet racing was done on Clayton Road, Thurnscoe, or should I say, in a field just at the start of Clayton Road. The arrangements for the racing were very crude in those days. A bicycle wheel was mounted on a board so it would go round with a long piece of string or twine with a rag on the end. The rag would be walked along the field, set down and a signal given to the man on the wheel to reel in the twine and the rag would go along at some speed with the whippets chasing it

Believe it or not, but when my time at the Home came to a stop, I had nowhere to go. I can remember seeing my father, maybe once or twice, when I was under the care of the West Riding. That went for my mother as well. The first time I saw my father after being taken into care, was the first time he brought my brother, John, back to the Hall after he had run away. I did not recognise him on that occasion which upset me when I found out about it. One day, much later, when I was playing football for a local club some time after leaving the Hall, I was knocked out and was put into Mexborough hospital and I saw him there. I did, some years afterwards, go and live with him whilst I was on leave from the Navy, but at the young age of fifty-eight, he died. God bless him.

As for my mother, I had to stop and think what to put down very carefully. There is a difference of opinion within my family over her, not only with my brothers and sisters, but also my step brother and sister, whom I respect just as much. My eldest brother, Peter, said to me, when I mentioned it to him some time ago, that I was writing my book and that I should put down what I feel I had received from my mother, not what anyone else thinks. If others have a different opinion, then let them write it down, in their own story. I think that he was right.

My mother is a large, and I mean large, woman. A woman that said very little until she felt the need to but, when she did, the whole street heard her. I remember seeing her on a rare visit to the Hall sitting in a corner, saying nothing. So, until I left the Hall, in fact until I was married, I did not have any contact with her.

My sister has told me that, many a time, my Mum would be staggering up the road, drunk. My father would get a large pram, with no hood on it and meet her at the bottom of the street and push her home in the pram. Goodness knows where her money came from but, I understand, my father spent time in jail, either because the rent had not been paid or the electricity or gas meter had been raided. In those days, the adult male had to take the responsibility for the house, not the lady. It is my impression from all that has